BIR, Customs are weakest links — GMA

They are the weakest links.

But President Arroyo can’t say goodbye yet to the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs, the government’s two chief tax collecting agencies which she admitted to be the "weakest links" in her administration’s anti-graft campaign.

Just like the poker-faced Edu Manzano, host of the popular game show "The Weakest Link," Mrs. Arroyo said she does not need any "drama" to extract the undesirables in her campaign to rid the government of big-time grafters.

The President said in her radio program yesterday that she wants the BIR and Customs to become the "showcases" of a revitalized bureaucracy after bidding goodbye to the twin evils of graft and corruption.

Although she was happy over the findings of an opinion survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations that revealed a high rating for her government’s sincerity, she admitted that petty corruption in the two agencies "traditionally pulls down" the entire executive branch.

"It has always been the perception of the people that the BIR and Customs are the ‘weakest link’. That is why, as I have said in the past, I would like these two agencies to be the ‘showcases’ of my anti-graft and corruption campaign," Mrs. Arroyo said.

"Because they are traditionally the ‘weakest links’, what we did was to place strong and upright appointees, namely, Rene Banes at the BIR and Tony Bernardo at Customs," she pointed out.